Getting from Place to Place

There are three ways to get around: land, sea and air! We'll be examining Australia's situation for all three categories:

Land: Australia has 823,217 km of roads, a majority of which are unpaved. Australia has a large and interconnected highway system. 

Australia also has a developed railway system, both for freight and passengers. The rail network is comprised of over 40,000km of rails, most of which is publicly owned. Most recently, a railway was completed in 2004, allowing for transit between Adelaide and Darwin. Freight is performed by private companies while public transit is a mixture of government and private operations.

An interesting note about the Australian railway is that colonies built independently of one another when first starting the project. London advised Australia to adopt a standard gauge for rails, in case of the event that they ever wanted to integrate between colonies, but the colonies didn't take the advice. Because of this, there are still some areas of track that are unused.

Sea (more generally, water): As far as internal waterways go, Australia doesn't have too much. With 2,000 km of waterways, (mainly used for recreation on Murray and Murray-Darling river systems) (2011) Australia is 43rd for water transportation within the country.

Of course, Australia has a lot of navigation in the ocean surrounding the country.  There are ports in
Brisbane, Cairns, Dampier, Darwin, Fremantle, Gladstone, Geelong, Hay Point, Hobart, Jervis Bay, Melbourne, Newcastle, Port Adelaide, Port Dalrymple, Port Hedland, Port Kembla, Port Lincoln, Port Walcott and Sydney, with most being bulk carrier and cargo.

Air: Australia is home to  467 airports, 333 of which have paved runways (I'm not sure I would ever want to land on an unpaved runway, but maybe it isn't so bad). Australia has four major airlines: JetStar, Tiger, Virgin Blue and Qantas. From what I've collected, the first two are generally the cheapest, though the last two are more comfortable. Australia also has one heliport.